Saturday, January 31, 2015

One of the delights of looking deeply into someone’s life is
the connections that come, often unbidden, often unexpected. Elizabeth Bishop
had a fascinating immediate maternal family and an intriguing set of ancestors.
(I am sure her paternal side was interesting, too, but my research has focused
on her maternal side.) One of my favourite of her relatives was one of her great-uncles,
the painter George W. Hutchinson. As Chapter Three of Lifting Yesterday tries to convey, the connections between him and
Bishop were many and complex, some quite direct and literal, some rather
oblique and mysterious.

It was too bad that Bishop never met her great-uncle – I am
sure they would have hit it off, as George Hutchinson had a wonderful sense of
humour and a truly curious sort of life. I have been looking into his life with
my friend and colleague Lilian Falk since the early 1990s. Lilian was one of
those wondrous synchoronicities that happen – and I am most grateful that
George, in is own strange way, brought us together.

I have also had the great pleasure of connecting with
several people in the U.K. who have a direct line of descent from George. First, perhaps
ten years ago now, came Pat and Graham Kench. Pat is the great-niece of Lily
Yerbury, George’s second wife. The Kenches visited Nova Scotia in June 2011 and they brought
with them a remarkable self-portrait George did in 1914, when he was in his
early 60s. It hangs in the EB House, and eventually will go to Acadia University.

Second, about three years ago, came Jayne Lawrence, one of
George’s great-grandchildren. She is the daughter of Gordon (Hutchinson) King, who was the son of Victor
Jubilee (Hutchinson) King, who was one of George’s youngest sons. Jane provided
me with important material she had located in her family research. Thank you Jayne. She also
sent me a dear painting done by her father, Gordon – especially for me – a treasured
possession.

Third, late last year, came Matthew Hutchinson, the son of
Marty Hutchinson, who was the son of Benjamin Hutchinson, George’s oldest
child. Matthew has kindly sent to me a number of photographs, one of them the
earliest image of George Hutchinson I have ever seen – a very young man,
probably at the beginning of his illustrating career in the 1880s. Matthew has
kindly given me permission to post this image of George, the first time, I
think, that it has been publicly shown. George had a way with a moustache!

From all of these wonderful people, I have learned a great deal
about George Hutchinson, and with each discovery, it became clearer that
George’s life was full, complex and deeply interesting in its own right, not
just to his great-niece Elizabeth Bishop.

You can learn more about George Hutchinson by subscribing to
Lifting Yesterday. It is still
possible to do so – go to the “Lifting Yesterday” link at the top of the page
to find out how to subscribe.

Over the years I have written essays about George
Hutchinson’s connection to Bishop. My first essay was presented at the first
Bishop symposium to be held, at Vassar
College, in September
1994. Most of that essay was integrated into Chapter Three of Lifting
Yesterday. My collaboration with Lilian Falk triggered another essay, “What’s
in a Name: The Gilbert Stuart Newton Plaque Error” (which, in spite of its
title, is indeed about George Hutchinson). This latter essay was published in Acadiensis in the Autumn 1995 issue. I
have a pdf of this file if anyone is interested. Or you can find it in the Acadiensis archives: http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/Acadiensis/index.

Lilian Falk wrote a wonderful essay about George
Hutchinson’s illustrating career, which was presented to the Royal Nova Scotia
Historical Society and appeared in its Journal
in Vol. 9, 2006. My name is included as co-author, but it is primarily
Lilian’s work. I can send this as a pdf, too. Lilian co-wrote an intriguing
essay about George, “George Hutchinson, a Canadian Illustrator of Robert Louis
Stevenson’s Treasure
Island,” which appeared in Canadian Children’s Literature (now
Jeunesse Journal), Vol., 25:4, No.
96, 1999. The journal’s site is searchable if you register, so it can be found
there.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

John’s Sunday “Today in Bishop,” which invoked Congonhas,
triggered a vivid memory of my brief visit there in September 1999, that trip
of a lifetime to attend a Bishop conference in Ouro Prêto -- a group of us went by bus to Rio afterwards and we stopped at several places on the way, including Congonhas. I went searching
through my “Brazil
trip” photo album and found pictures I took of the Twelve Prophets by
Aleijadinho – pictures taken with one of those disposable cameras (I was
no photographer!). I have scanned two and wanted to post them here.

It just so
happens that today the heart of Bishop’s world -- New England, Maine
and the Maritimes -- is in the grip of a serious blizzard. As I look out my window
the snow is thick and “falling” horizontally on fierce wind. So, it is nice to
contemplate that time sixteen years ago: the glorious blue sky, the quite
powerful statues gazing off, seeing who knows what, the good friends who
wandered around with me amazed that we were there. In the mid-1960s, after being in
Brazil for over a decade, Bishop had a bout of “nostalgia for the North” – I
think she’d have been glad to be in Rio on a day such as today, when you can’t
see the nose in front of your face, as the saying here goes. Sometime soon, I
will post something about my favourite Aleijadinho sculputure, which I saw in
Mariana. Stay safe!

Monday, January 26, 2015

Constant readers from amongst the Patronage-at-Large will recollect with pleasure a recent "Today's Video" by the group Fox & Coyote, in which they performed a song inspired by EB's "Letter to New York." I wrote to them asking if they could provide a little background about themselves and their process of composition. Here is their reply:

A dear friend gave the poem to me. She lived in NYC
at the time, and we had exchanged a number of letters -- so EB's poem
was especially poignant because of that. I imagined my friend doing all
the things that EB mentions in her poem, especially riding in a taxi
through/around Central Park. The bookending lines stuck with me most,
though: In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing

and

nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going

Those
lines were so true to me -- that's exactly what I wanted to know: the
details of my friend's life because that's what you miss out on when
geographically separated.

I alluded to these bookending
lines in my lyrics with "Desert sands beneath, could you tell me where
you are and where you're going?" It felt so much like this NYC friend of
mine was with me all the time -- the sands underneath my feet -- but it
also felt like she was so fleeting, which is why I mention things like
"Your heart beats under my feet; I want to be underneath" and "I had a
plan for you and me. I drew it in the desert sands; it blew away so
easily." It was most likely my own perceptions and context, but when I
read EB's poem, I felt some desperation in her words. I tried to echo
that in my song.

Fox
& Coyote is made up of four semi-awkward and semi-hilarious
people whose lives, like most people, are pulled in so many directions.
One of those pulls is Fox & Coyote -- because we love
creating with each other, and because we love each other. We're also
pulled
by romances, our jobs (which some of us like, and some of us don't),
friends
who live far away, families that live pretty close, and a bunch of
other things like whether we should brush our teeth in the morning.
These are the things that we write music about.

Somehow, and
with much gratitude for each other, we make time to write indie rock
songs played on folk instruments, meaning that we're an indie folk band.
Or something. We like making dinner together and communicating over
dinner with pregnant pauses, meaningful looks, weird jokes, crude hand
gestures, and sometimes by talking. I guess that's what happens when you
spend a lot of time with small group of people.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

So many times we misremember poems.
For years I thought Frost's "Mending Wall" had spelt
those upper, sun-spilt object lessons 'bowlders' --
at least that's how they were on page two twelve
of Untermeyer's sixth, combined edition.
Or take the different ways the high school students,
fulfilling arcane AP class requirements
in hopes of IBDs, the IV League,
and ABDs (or even Ph.D.s)
have mangled EB's villanelle "One Art."
I posted one the other day from Youtube:
"ThePrancingPainter" with her turtleneck
that matched her lipstick (not her horn-rimmed glasses);
a task she "had to do for English class."
She belted out the 'is': "IS no disaster,"
then "where it was you meant to visit" ['travel!'],
and worst of all the final line, when after
a "Write it" flaccid as a Kellogg's cornflake
(floating in a bowl and taking movies?)
the final overwhelming, universal
catastrophe was shot down with the "A"
her teacher (she feels certain) ought to give her
for memorizing such a dorky poem.
In short, she didn't really bowl me over.
And yet, and yet... I cannot look inside her,
or see the grandma fifty-nine years hence
remove her horn-rimmed glasses to look back
on losses yet unlisted, milk yet spilt,
and think of when she stood before the camera
and said the words, although she can't remember
just how that poem went, or what the name was
that awful teacher had, who'd been so nasty
one January morning nine years after
--
to the day it was -- he'd lost his Dad.

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Los Angeles–based, German-born painter Silke Otto-Knapp comes to the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto this spring with Land lies in water, an exhibition of twenty-nine paintings, including a portrait of Elizabeth Bishop, in whom she has had an abiding interest. The exhibition opens on February 14, 2015. Ms. Otto-Knapp will give a talk on her work at the gallery on March 18, 2015. A selection of her work may be viewed here.

Saturday, January 3, 2015

In 1999 I attended a Bishop conference in Ouro Prêto, Brazil.
A trip of a life-time for me, the memories of which remain vivid “after — how
many years?” The paper I presented was about Bishop’s translation of Mina Vida de Menina (The Diary of ‘Helena Morley’). My focus
was on how Bishop incorporated her own idiom, received in large measure from
her childhood in Nova Scotia,
into the translation, with special focus on her grandmother’s influence. Below
is an excerpt from this paper, which was never published. If you are interested
in reading the whole paper, I am offering a pdf of it gratis, part of the
supplement to Lifting Yesterday.

....What we read in the Diary is what
might be called the first transcription of oral tradition to written language.
Listen to how Bishop translated it: “She told us the story” (5), “telling
stories about people” (9), “he told some very funny stories” (16), “one of my
father’s stories” (19), “the story of her confession” (21), “the story of the
owl” (27), “a story of the old days” (71), “the children tell stories” (73), “mama
told a story” (95), “we begin to tell stories” (131), “make up some story”
(138), “I like mama’s stories better than papa’s” (140), “Reginalda...knows the
most stories” (140), “our aunts amuse us by telling stories” (158), “I like the
stories about the old days better” (158), “he told me the story” (179), “mama
tells stories of bygone days” (224), “sometimes she tells us stories” (275).
And there are many more examples.

The Diary
is also filled with a wonderful array of aphorism, one of the vital elements of
the oral tradition which survives even in highly text-bound North American
culture. Listen to how Bishop translated this element: “God helps more surely
than getting up early” (265); “From day to day God smooths the way” (214); “Nothing
comes free; money makes the mare go” (226); “The unlucky can’t cry forever”
(108); “Marriages and shrouds are made in Heaven” (154); “A crooked stick can’t
be straightened” (127); “What the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t feel” (43);
“The fingers of the hand aren’t all the same” (37); “You must have been born
with a caul” (103); “The place is a regular asylum” (188); “Those who have
children will never have full bellies” (187).

While she
tried to remain true to the tone and texture of the original, Bishop
incorporated a good deal of her own colloquialism and idiom into the
translation. I offer only one interesting example — there are many. One of
Bishop’s favourite words was “awful” (and its variations). Listen to how many
ways Bishop brings it into the translation: “awfully sorry,” “awfully funny,” “perfectly
awful,” “how awful,” “awful things,” “something awful,” “an awful lot,” “this
awful fault,” “that awful dentist,” “it’s awful,” “the rice is awful,” “it must
be awful,” “so awful,” “awful uproar,” “really awfully bad,” “too awful,” “an
awful shock.” And, again, there are many more examples.

The reason
these forms of expression (story, aphorism, idiom) appealed to Bishop was
because they went straight back to her own childhood. Great Village at the turn
of the twentieth century was a world where written language and texts played
major roles, but this place and time remained in many ways a highly oral
culture — itself structured around storytelling and aphorism as the medium for
education, entertainment and individual and communal creativity. People, places
and events were known through what was said about them — the past, present and
future were contemplated in the kitchens, parlours, churches and schoolrooms not
only through words on a page, but through monologue, dialogue, experiential and
expressive oral tradition.

Perhaps the
most important nexus of oral tradition in Bishop’s and Helena’s childhood
worlds was grandmother. In 1958 Bishop wrote to her maternal aunt, Grace Bulmer
Bowers: "'The Diary'
is doing pretty well, I think....It was hard to make it sound natural
and quite often when I got stuck about how to translate some of the grandmother’s
remarks or expressions, and I couldn’t translate them literally, I’d try to
think of what Gammie would have said! I think it worked pretty well." (12 March)

Victoria Harrison
has pointed out the way Bishop merged one of Gammie Bulmer’s favourite phrases,
“Nobody knows,” with Dona Teodora’s way of speaking (176) — there are several
examples of this particular confluence in the Diary: “Grandma said that all
that is a mystery, that we never really know these things for sure” (102); “Nobody
knows what it was” (199); “Nobody knows what she wants” (132); “God knows what
he’s doing” (211). Helena herself adopts the phrase, “Nobody knows what a
person is like inside” (65).

However,
the link between these two grandmothers is apparent almost every time we
encounter Dona Teodora in the Diary. Though Gammie Bulmer was not a wealthy
widow with a houseful of ex-slaves, she was the matriarch of a large family,
the arbiter of family disputes, the hostess of a regular stream of visitors
(relatives and friends), a participant in the charitable activities of the
community, a devout practitioner of her faith and a partly rational, partly
credulous believer in the mysteries of life and death. Though smaller, Gammie
Bulmer’s home was in many ways similar to Dona Teodora’s chácara, “a house with
extensive gardens, or even a small farm, but not necessarily in the country” (Diary xxxv). These homes were the centre
of family life. Moreover, besides “Nobody knows,” both women had a store of
other aphoristic utterances. And with one of these, we see directly the
practice Bishop described to Aunt Grace. One of Dona Teodora’s favourite
exclamations was, “Forte coisa!” which Bishop tells us in a note literally
means “Strong thing” or “Fine thing.” Bishop chose to substitute the literal
English translation — which diminishes the complex connotation of the
Portuguese — with one of Gammie Bulmer's actual phrases, “I never in my born
days!”

*********************************************************

Again, if
you would like to read the entire paper, let me know and I can send you the
pdf. I also want to reiterate, you can
subscribe for Lifting Yesterday at
any point. The cost is $25.00 for ten pdfs, which can be sent all at once, or
once a month. Contact me at slbarry@ns.sympatico.ca.

*********************************************************

A Great
Village Update

Our Great Village
correspondent Patti Sharpe sent these photos the other day. Earlier this week,
the old Great Village bridge was finally completely
dismantled. The iron structure was lifted, impressively, and set on the ground,
where the beams were cut up (we all assume for scrap). The end of an era, as
this dear old bridge has been on this site for well over 100 years. As Bishop
might say, “Good-bye to the bridge.”

Thursday, January 1, 2015

The Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova
Scotia was thrilled to learn that our Honorary Patron Suzie LeBlanc has been made a Member of the
Order of Canada! Check out this link for the full list of recipients:

The other exciting news: On Saturday, 8 August 2015, the
EBSNS will present “The Elizabeth Bishop Festival,” a one-day arts
extravaganza, in Great Village, N.S. Inspired by Elizabeth Bishop’s eclectic
interest in and love of all the arts, this festival will draw together artists
of all disciplines from across Nova Scotia who will participate in a wide
variety of activities. This festival is a celebration of Nova Scotia’s rich cultural
heritage and artistic practices.

Planning for the festival is underway and the EBSNS will
make regular announcements on the blog about the artists who will participate and the
programme over the next seven months. Mark THE
ELIZABETH BISHOP FESTIVAL “In the Village,” 8 August 2015, on your
calendars!!

Join us for a day of celebration, inspiration and fun. We’ll have
the banners up and the welcome mat out – we look forward to seeing you there!

April Sharpe is the young Great Village artist who created the permanent
banner that is displayed in Great
Village every summer. She is wearing a t-shirt with the image used for the EB100 banner in 2011.

5 September 2017: Nulla dies sine linea

[Today, near the beginning of a new month traditionally associated with the first day of school we begin a new feature to replace the long-running "Today in Bishop." Each day we hope to post a brief reflection on a line from Bishop's poetry, beginning with the title of the first poem in her first book, North & South. We would be happy to have contributions from the Patronage-at-Large, should anyone be so inclined.]

"The Map"

Not simply "Map": abstract, generalized, a concept more than an object, perhaps not even a noun at all, but an imperative, an imperious directive; nor yet "A Map": token of a type, a random example run across by chance, perhaps, on the dusty dark-fumed oak table in the centre of Marks & Co. once-upon-a-time during a long-anticipated visit to 84, Charing Cross Road just prior to its burial beneath a modernist glass tower, where its once-upon-a-place is now marked by a memorial plaque; no, no, no — "The Map" — unique, archetypal, redolent of all that makes it one-and-only, but also a congeries of interwoven metonymies as patterned and abundant as the sixth of the "La Dame à la licorne" Flemish tapestries ("À mon seul désir") or as Vermeer's "De Soldaat en het Lachende Meisje"— or, yet again, as the map in EB's "Primer Class."

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John Barnstead

I retired in 2014 after forty years of teaching Russian language and literature. I'm a past president of the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia.

Sandra Barry

I am a poet, independent scholar, freelance editor, and secretary of the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia.

Suzie LeBlanc

I am a professional singer who recently became a great admirer of Elizabeth Bishop's writing. I am also fond of walking and nature and I became involved with the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary because I wanted to have her poems set to music so that I could sing them.